The shipyard of the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam around
1750
The
Dutch East India Company ( or
VOC in
Dutch,
literally "United
East Indian Company") was a
chartered company established in
1602, when the
States-General of the
Netherlands granted it a 21-year
monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia.
It was the first
multinational
corporation in the world and the first company to issue
stock. It was also arguably the world's first
megacorporation, possessing
quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war,
negotiate treaties, coin money, and establish colonies.
The Dutch East India Company remained an important trading concern
for almost two centuries, paying an 18% annual
dividend for almost 200 years. In its declining
years in the late 18th century it was referred to as
Vergaan
Onder Corruptie (referring to the acronym VOC) which
translates as 'Perished By Corruption'. The VOC became bankrupt and
was formally dissolved in 1800, its possessions and the debt being
taken over by the government of the Dutch
Batavian Republic.
The VOC's territories
became the Dutch East
Indies
and were expanded over the course of the 19th
century to include the whole of the Indonesian archipelago, and in
the 20th century would form Indonesia
.
History
Background
During the 16th century, the
spice trade
was dominated by the Portuguese who used Lisbon as a
staple port. Before the
Dutch Revolt, Antwerp had played an important
role as a distribution center in
northern Europe, but after 1591 the
Portuguese used an international syndicate of the German
Fuggers and
Welsers, and
Spanish and Italian firms that used Hamburg as its northern staple,
to distribute their goods, thereby cutting out Dutch merchants. At
the same time, the Portuguese trade system was so inefficient that
it was unable to supply growing demand, in particular the demand
for pepper. The demand for spices was relatively
inelastic, and the lagging supply
of pepper therefore caused a sharp rise in pepper prices at the
time.
Likewise, as Portugal had been "united" with the Spanish crown,
with which the
Dutch Republic was at
war, in 1580, the
Portuguese
Empire became an appropriate target for military incursions.
These three factors formed motive for Dutch merchants to enter the
intercontinental spice trade themselves at this time. Finally, a
number of Dutchmen like
Jan
Huyghen van Linschoten and
Cornelis de Houtman obtained first hand
knowledge of the "secret" Portuguese trade routes and practices,
thereby providing opportunity.
The stage was thus set for Houtman's first
voyage to Banten
, the chief
port of Java
, and back
(1595–97), which generated a modest profit.
In 1596, a group of Dutch merchants decided to try again to
circumvent the Portuguese monopoly. In 1596, a four-ship expedition
led by
Cornelis de Houtman was
the first Dutch contact with Indonesia.
The expedition reached
Banten
, the main pepper port of West Java, where they
clashed with both the Portuguese and indigenous Indonesians.
Houtman's
expedition then sailed east along the north coast of Java
, losing
twelve crew to a Javanese attack at Sidayu
and killing a local ruler in Madura
. Half
the crew were lost before the expedition made it back to the
Netherlands the following year, but with enough spices to make a
considerable profit.
In 1598, an increasing number of new fleets were sent out by
competing merchant groups from around the Netherlands. Some fleets
were lost, but most were successful, with some voyages producing
high profits. In March 1599, a fleet of twenty-two ships under
Jacob van Neck of five different
companies was the first Dutch fleet to reach the ‘Spice Islands’ of
Maluku. The ships returned to Europe in 1599 and 1600 and, although
eight ships were lost, the expedition made a 400 percent profit.
In 1600,
the Dutch joined forces with the local Hituese (near Ambon
) in an anti-Portuguese alliance, in return for
which the Dutch were given the sole right to purchase spices from
Hitu. Dutch control of Ambon was achieved in alliance with
Hitu when in February 1605, they prepared to attack a Portuguese
fort in Ambon but the Portuguese surrendered.
In 1613, the Dutch
expelled the Portuguese from their Solor
fort, but a
subsequent Portuguese attack led to a second change of hands;
following this second reoccupation, the Dutch once again captured
Solor, in 1636.
Formation
At the time, it was customary for a company to be set up only for
the duration of a single voyage, and to be liquidated right after
the return of the fleet. Investment in these expeditions was a very
high-risk venture, not only because of the usual dangers of piracy,
disease and shipwreck, but also because the interplay of inelastic
demand and relatively elastic supply of spices could make prices
tumble at just the wrong moment, thereby ruining prospects of
profitability. To manage such risk the forming of a
cartel to control supply would seem logical. This
first occurred to the English, who bundled their forces into a
monopoly enterprise, the
East India Company in 1600, thereby
threatening their Dutch competitors with ruin. In 1602, the Dutch
government followed suit, sponsoring the creation of a single
"United East Indies Company" that was also granted a monopoly over
the Asian trade. The charter of the new company empowered it to
build forts, maintain armies, and conclude treaties with Asian
rulers. It provided for a venture that would continue for 21 years,
with a financial accounting only at the end of each decade.
1603, the first permanent Dutch trading post in Indonesia was
established in
Banten
,
West Java
and in 1611, another was established at
Jayakarta
(later 'Batavia' and then 'Jakarta'). In 1610, the
VOC established the post of Governor General to enable firmer
control of their affairs in Asia. To advise and control the risk of
despotic Governors General, a Council of the
Indies (
Raad van Indië) was created. The Governor General
effectively became the main administrator of the VOC's activities
in Asia, although the
Heeren XVII continued to officially
have overall control.
VOC headquarters were in Ambon for the tenures of the first three
Governors General (1610-1619), but it was not a satisfactory
location. Although it was at the centre of the spice production
areas, it was far from the Asian trade routes and other VOC areas
of activity ranging from Africa to Japan. A location in the west of
the archipelago was thus sought; the Straits of Malacca were
strategic, but had become dangerous following the Portuguese
conquest and the first permanent VOC settlement in Banten was
controlled by a powerful local ruler and subject to stiff
competition from Chinese and English traders.
In 1604, a
second English East India Company
voyage commanded by Sir Henry
Middleton reached the islands of Ternate
, Tidore
, Ambon
and Banda
; in Banda,
they encountered severe VOC hostility, which saw the beginning of
Anglo-Dutch competition for access to spices. From 1611 to 1617, the
English established trading posts at Sukadana (southwest Kalimantan), Makassar
, Jayakarta
and Jepara
in Java
, and Aceh,
Pariaman
and Jambi
in Sumatra
which
threatened Dutch ambitions for a monopoly on East Indies
trade. Diplomatic agreements in Europe in 1620 ushered in a
period of cooperation between the Dutch and the English over the
spice trade.This ended with a notorious, but disputed incident,
known as the '
Amboyna massacre',
where ten Englishmen were arrested, tried and beheaded for
conspiracy against the Dutch government. Although this caused
outrage in Europe and a diplomatic crisis, the English quietly
withdrew from most of their Indonesian activities (except trading
in Bantam) and focused on other Asian interests.
Growth
In 1619,
Jan Pieterszoon Coen
was appointed Governor-General of the VOC. He was a man of
extraordinary vision, far beyond that of the cautious directors at
home. He saw the possibility of the VOC becoming an Asian power,
both political and economic. He was not afraid to use brute force
to put the VOC on a firm footing.
On 30 May 1619, Coen, backed by a force
of nineteen ships, stormed Jayakarta driving out the Banten forces,
and from the ashes, established Batavia
as the VOC headquarters. To establish a
monopoly for the clove trade, in the 1620s almost the entire native
population of the Banda
Islands
, the source of nutmeg was
deported, driven away, starved to death, or killed in an attempt to
replace them with Dutch plantations, operated with slave
labour.He hoped to settle large numbers of Dutch colonists
in the East Indies, but this part of his policies never
materialized, because the
Heren XVII were wary at the time
of large, open-ended financial commitments.
Another of Coen's ventures was more successful. A major problem in
the European trade with Asia at the time was that the Europeans
could offer few goods that Asian consumers wanted, except silver
and gold. European traders therefore had to pay for spices with the
precious metals, and this was in short supply in Europe, except for
Spain and Portugal. The Dutch and English had to obtain it by
creating a trade surplus with other European countries. Coen
discovered the obvious solution for the problem: to start an
intra-Asiatic trade system, whose profits could be used to finance
the spice trade with Europe. In the long run this obviated the need
for exports of precious metals from Europe, though at first it
required the formation of a large trading-capital fund in the
Indies. The VOC reinvested a large share of its profits to this end
in the period up to 1630.The VOC traded throughout Asia. Ships
coming into Batavia from the Netherlands carried supplies for VOC
settlements in Asia. Silver and copper from Japan were used to
trade with India and China for silk, cotton, porcelain, and
textiles. These products were either traded within Asia for the
coveted spices or brought back to Europe. The VOC was also
instrumental in introducing European ideas and technology to Asia.
The Company supported Christian missionaries and traded modern
technology with China and Japan.
A more peaceful VOC trade post on
Dejima
, an artificial island off the coast of
Nagasaki, was for more than two
hundred years the only place where Europeans were permitted to
trade with Japan.
In 1640,
the VOC obtained the port of Galle
, Sri Lanka
, from the Portuguese and broke the latter's
monopoly of the cinnamon trade.
In 1658,
Gerard Hulft laid siege to Colombo
, which was captured with the help of King Rajasinghe II of Kandy
. By
1659, the Portuguese had been expelled from the coastal regions,
which were then occupied by the VOC, securing for it the monopoly
over cinnamon.To prevent the Portuguese or the English from ever
recapturing Sri Lanka, the VOC went on to conquer the entire
Malabar Coast upon the Portuguese,
almost entirely driving them from the west coast of India. When
news of a peace agreement between Portugal and the Netherlands
reached Asia in 1663, Goa was the only remaining Portuguese city on
the west coast.
In 1652,
Jan van Riebeeck established an
outpost at the Cape of
Good Hope
(the southwestern tip of Africa, currently in South
Africa) to re-supply VOC ships on their journey to East
Asia. This post later became a full-fledged colony, the
Cape Colony, when more Dutch
and other Europeans started to settle there.
VOC
trading posts were also established in Persia
(now
Iran
), Bengal
(now
Bangladesh
, but then part of India), Malacca
(Melaka, now in Malaysia
), Siam (now Thailand
), mainland China (Canton
), Formosa
(now Taiwan
) and the
Malabar Coast and Coromandel Coast in India. In 1662,
however,
Koxinga expelled the Dutch from
Taiwan (
see History of
Taiwan).
By 1669, the VOC was the richest private company the world had ever
seen, with over 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50,000 employees,
a private army of 10,000 soldiers, and a
dividend payment of 40% on the original
investment.
Reorientation
Around 1670, two events caused the growth of VOC trade to stall. In
the first place, the highly profitable trade with Japan started to
decline.
The loss of the outpost on Formosa to
Koxinga and related internal turmoil in
China (where the Ming
dynasty
was being replaced with the Qing dynasty
) brought an end to the silk trade after
1666. Though the VOC substituted Bengali for Chinese silk
other forces affected the supply of Japanese silver and gold. The
shogunate enacted a number of measures to
limit the export of these precious metals, in the process limiting
VOC opportunities for trade, and severely worsening the terms of
trade. Therefore, Japan ceased to function as the lynchpin of the
intra-Asiatic trade of the VOC by 1685.
Even more importantly, the
Third
Anglo-Dutch War temporarily interrupted VOC trade with Europe.
This caused a spike in the price of pepper, which enticed the
British East India Company (EIC) to aggressively enter this market
in the years after 1672. Previously, one of the tenets of the VOC
pricing policy was to slightly over-supply the pepper market, so as
to depress prices below the level where interlopers were encouraged
to enter the market (instead of striving for short-term profit
maximization). The wisdom of such a policy was illustrated when a
fierce price war with the EIC ensued, as that company flooded the
market with new supplies from India. In this struggle for market
share, the VOC (which had much larger financial resources) could
wait out the EIC. Indeed by 1683, the latter came close to
bankruptcy; its share price plummeted from 600 to 250; and its
president
Josiah Child was temporarily
forced from office.
However, the writing was on the wall. Other companies, like the
French East India Company
and the
Danish East India
Company also started to make inroads on the Dutch system.
The VOC
therefore closed the heretofore flourishing open pepper emporium of
Bantam
by a treaty
of 1684 with the Sultan. Also, on the Coromandel Coast, it moved its chief
stronghold from Pulicat
to Negapatnam
, so as to secure a monopoly on the pepper trade at
the detriment of the French and the Danes. However, the
importance of these traditional commodities in the Asian-European
trade was diminishing rapidly at the time. The military outlays
that the VOC needed to make to enhance its monopoly were not
justified by the increased profits of this declining trade.
Nevertheless, this lesson was slow to sink
in and at first the VOC made the strategic decision to improve its
military position on the Malabar Coast
(hoping thereby to curtail English influence in the area, and end
the drain on its resources from the cost of the Malabar garrisons)
by using force to compel the Zamorin of
Calicut
to submit to Dutch domination. In 1710, the
Zamorin was made to sign a treaty with the VOC undertaking to trade
exclusively with the VOC and expel other European traders. For a
brief time, this appeared to improve the Company's prospects.
However, in 1715, with EIC encouragement, the Zamorin renounced the
treaty. Though a Dutch army managed to suppress this insurrection
temporarily, the Zamorin continued to trade with the English and
the French, which led to an appreciable upsurge in English and
French traffic. The VOC decided in 1721 that it was no longer worth
the trouble to try and dominate the Malabar pepper and spice trade.
A strategic decision was taken to scale down the Dutch military
presence and in effect yield the area to EIC influence.
The 1741
Battle of Colachel by
Nairs of
Travancore under Raja
Marthanda Varma was therefore a rearguard
action. The Dutch commander Captain
Eustachius De Lannoy was captured.
Marthanda Varma agreed to spare the Dutch captain's life on
condition that he joined his army and trained his soldiers on
modern lines. This defeat in the
Travancore-Dutch War is considered the
earliest example of an organized Asian power overcoming European
military technology and tactics; and it signaled the decline of
Dutch power in India.
The attempt to continue as before as a low volume-high profit
business enterprise with its core business in the spice trade had
therefore failed. The Company had however already (reluctantly)
followed the example of its European competitors in diversifying
into other Asian commodities, like tea, coffee, cotton, textiles,
and sugar. These commodities provided a lower profit margin and
therefore required a larger sales volume to generate the same
amount of revenue. This structural change in the commodity
composition of the VOC's trade started in the early 1680s, after
the temporary collapse of the EIC around 1683 offered an excellent
opportunity to enter these markets. The actual cause for the change
lies, however, in two structural features of this new era.
In the first place, there was a revolutionary change in the tastes
affecting European demand for Asian textiles, and coffee and tea,
around the turn of the 18th century. Secondly, a new era of an
abundant supply of capital at low interest rates suddenly opened
around this time. The second factor enabled the Company to easily
finance its expansion in the new areas of commerce. Between the
1680s and 1720s, the VOC was therefore able to equip and man an
appreciable expansion of its fleet, and acquire a large amount of
precious metals to finance the purchase of large amounts of Asian
commodities, for shipment to Europe. The overall effect was to
approximately double the size of the company.
The tonnage of the returning ships rose by 125 percent in this
period. However, the Company's revenues from the sale of goods
landed in Europe rose by only 78 percent. This reflects the basic
change in the VOC's circumstances that had occurred: it now
operated in new markets for goods with an elastic demand, in which
it had to compete on an equal footing with other suppliers. This
made for low profit margins. Unfortunately, the business
information systems of the time made this difficult to discern for
the managers of the company, which may partly explain the mistakes
they made from hindsight. This lack of information might have been
counteracted (as in earlier times in the VOC's history) by the
business acumen of the directors. Unfortunately by this time these
were almost exclusively recruited from the political
regent class, which had long since lost its
close relationship with merchant circles.
Low profit margins in themselves don't explain the deterioration of
revenues. To a large extent the costs of the operation of the VOC
had a "fixed" character (military establishments; maintenance of
the fleet and such). Profit levels might therefore have been
maintained if the increase in the scale of trading operations that
in fact took place, had resulted in
economies of scale. However, though
larger ships transported the growing volume of goods, labor
productivity did not go up sufficiently to realize these. In
general the Company's overhead rose in step with the growth in
trade volume; declining gross margins translated directly into a
decline in profitability of the invested capital. The era of
expansion was one of "profitless growth".
Concretely: "[t]he long-term average annual profit in the VOC's
1630-70 'Golden Age' was 2.1 million guilders, of which just under
half was distributed as dividends and the remainder reinvested. The
long-term average annual profit in the 'Expansion Age' (1680-1730)
was 2.0 million guilders, of which three-quarters was distributed
as dividend and one-quarter reinvested. In the earlier period,
profits averaged 18 percent of total revenues; in the latter
period, 10 percent. The annual return of invested capital in the
earlier period stood at approximately 6 percent; in the latter
period, 3.4 percent."
Nevertheless, in the eyes of investors the VOC did not do too
badly. The share price hovered consistently around the 400 mark
from the mid-1680s (which, during a hiccup around the
Glorious Revolution in 1688), and they
reached an all-time high of around 642 in the 1720s. VOC shares
then yielded a return of 3.5 percent, only slightly less than the
yield on Dutch government bonds.
Decline
However, from there on the fortunes of the VOC started to decline.
Five major problems, not all of equal weight, can be adduced to
explain its decline in the next fifty years to 1780.
- There was a steady erosion of intra-Asiatic trade by changes in
the Asiatic political and economic environment that the VOC could
do little about. These factors gradually squeezed the company out
of Persia, Surat, the Malabar Coast, and Bengal. The company had to
confine its operations to the belt it physically controlled, from
Ceylon through the Indonesian archipelago. The volume of this
intra-Asiatic trade, and its profitability, therefore had to
shrink.
- The way the company was organized in Asia (centralized on its
hub in Batavia) that initially had offered advantages in gathering
market information, began to cause disadvantages in the 18th
century, because of the inefficiency of first shipping everything
to this central point. This disadvantage was most keenly felt in
the tea trade, where competitors like the EIC and the Ostend Company shipped directly from China to
Europe.
- The "venality" of the VOC's personnel (in the sense of
corruption and non-performance of duties), though a problem for all
East-India Companies at the time, seems to have plagued the VOC on
a larger scale than its competitors. To be sure, the company was
not a "good employer". Salaries were low, and "private-account
trading" was officially not allowed. Not surprisingly, it
proliferated in the 18th century to the detriment of the company's
performance. From about the 1790s onward, the phrase perished
by corruption (also abbreviated VOC in Dutch) came to
summarize the company's future.
- A problem that the VOC shared with other companies was the high
mortality and morbidity among its employees. This decimated the
company's ranks and enervated many of the survivors.
- A self-inflicted wound was the VOC's dividend policy. The
dividends distributed by the company had exceeded the surplus it
garnered in Europe in every decade but one (1710-1720)
from 1690 to 1760. However, in the period up to 1730 the directors
shipped resources to Asia to build up the trading capital there.
Consolidated bookkeeping therefore probably would have shown that
total profits exceeded dividends. In addition, between 1700 and
1740 the company retired 5.4 million guilders of long-term debt.
The company therefore was still on a secure financial footing in
these years. This changed after 1730. While profits plummeted the
bewindhebbers only slightly decreased dividends from the
earlier level. Distributed dividends were therefore in excess of
earnings in every decade but one (1760-1770). To accomplish this,
the Asian capital stock had to be drawn down by 4 million guilders
between 1730 and 1780, and the liquid capital available in Europe
was reduced by 20 million guilders in the same period. The
directors were therefore constrained to replenish the company's
liquidity by resorting to short-term financing from anticipatory
loans, backed by expected revenues from home-bound fleets.
Despite of all this, the VOC in 1780 remained an enormous
operation. Its capital in the Republic, consisting of ships and
goods in inventory, totaled 28 million guilders; its capital in
Asia, consisting of the liquid trading fund and goods en route to
Europe, totaled 46 million guilders. Total capital, net of
outstanding debt, stood at 62 million guilders. The prospects of
the company at this time therefore need not have been hopeless, had
one of the many plans to reform it been taken successfully in hand.
However, then the
Fourth
Anglo-Dutch War intervened. British attacks in Europe and Asia
reduced the VOC fleet by half; removed valuable cargo from its
control; and devastated its remaining power in Asia. The direct
losses of the VOC can be calculated at 43 million guilders. Loans
to keep the company operating reduced its net assets to zero.
From 1720 on, the market for sugar from Indonesia declined as the
competition from cheap sugar from Brazil increased. European
markets became saturated. Dozens of Chinese sugar traders went
bankrupt which led to massive unemployment, which in turn led to
gangs of unemployed
coolies. The Dutch
government in Batavia did not adequately respond to these problems.
In 1740, rumors of deportation of the gangs from the Batavia area
led to widespread rioting. The Dutch military searched houses of
Chinese in Batavia searching for weapons. When a house accidentally
burnt down, military and impoverished citizens started slaughtering
and pillaging the Chinese community. This
Chinese Massacre was
deemed sufficiently serious for the board of the VOC to start an
official investigation into the Government of the Dutch East Indies
for the first time in its history.
After the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, the VOC was a financial wreck,
and after vain attempts by the provincial States of Holland and
Zeeland to reorganize it, was nationalised on 1 March 1796 by the
new
Batavian Republic. Its charter
was renewed several times, but allowed to expire on 31 December
1800. Most of the possessions of the former VOC were subsequently
occupied by Great Britain during the
Napoleonic wars, but after the new
United Kingdom of the
Netherlands was created by the
Congress of Vienna, some of these were
restored to this successor state of the old
Dutch Republic by the
Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814.
Organization
The VOC had two types of shareholders: the
participanten,
who could be seen as non-managing partners, and the 76
bewindhebbers (later reduced to 60) who acted as managing
partners. This was the usual set-up for Dutch joint-stock companies
at the time. The innovation in the case of the VOC was, that the
liability of not just the
participanten, but also of the
bewindhebbers was limited to the paid-in capital (usually,
bewindhebbers had unlimited liability). The VOC therefore
was a limited-liability company. Also, the capital would be
permanent during the lifetime of the company.
As a consequence,
investors that wished to liquidate their interest in the interim
could only do this by selling their share to others on the Amsterdam
Stock Exchange
.
The VOC
consisted of six Chambers (Kamers) in port cities:
Amsterdam
, Delft
, Rotterdam
, Enkhuizen
, Middelburg
and Hoorn
.
Delegates of these chambers convened as the
Heeren XVII
(the Lords Seventeen). They were selected from the
bewindhebber-class of shareholders.
Of the
Heeren XVII, eight delegates were from the Chamber
of Amsterdam (one short of a majority on its own), four from the
Chamber of Zeeland, and one from each of the smaller Chambers,
while the seventeenth seat was alternatively from the Chamber of
Zeeland or rotated among the five small Chambers. Amsterdam had
thereby the decisive voice. The Zeelanders in particular had
misgivings about this arrangement at the beginning. The fear was
not unfounded, because in practice it meant Amsterdam stipulated
what happened.
The six chambers raised the start-up capital of the Dutch East
India Company:
Chamber |
Capital (Guilders) |
Amsterdam |
3,679,915 |
Middelburg |
1,300,405 |
Enkhuizen |
540,000 |
Delft |
469,400 |
Hoorn |
266,868 |
Rotterdam |
173,000 |
Total: |
6,424,588 |
The raising of capital in Rotterdam did not go so smoothly.
A
considerable part originated from inhabitants of Dordrecht
. Although it did not raise as much capital
as Amsterdam or Zeeland, Enkhuizen had the largest input in the
share capital of the VOC. Under the
first 358 shareholders, there were many small entrepreneurs, who
dared to take the
risk. The minimum investment
in the VOC was 3,000 guilders, which priced the Company's stock
within the means of many merchants.
Among the early shareholders of the VOC, immigrants played an
important role.
Under the 1,143 tenderers were 39 Germans and no fewer than 301 Zuid-Nederlanders (roughly present Belgium
and Luxemburg
, then under Habsburg rule),
of whom Isaac le Maire was the
largest subscriber with ƒ85,000. VOC's total
capitalization was ten times that of
its British rival.

The logo of the Amsterdam Chamber of
the VOC.
The logo of the VOC consisted of a large
capital 'V' with an O on the left and a C on
the right leg. The first letter of the hometown of the chamber
conducting the operation was placed on top (see figure for example
of the Amsterdam chamber logo). The flag of the company was orange,
white, blue (see
Dutch flag) with the
company logo embroidered on it.
The
Heeren XVII (Lords Seventeen) met alternately 6 years
in Amsterdam and 2 years in Middelburg. They defined the VOC's
general policy and divided the tasks among the Chambers. The
Chambers carried out all the necessary work, built their own ships
and warehouses and traded the merchandise. The
Heeren XVII
sent the ships' masters off with extensive instructions on the
route to be navigated, prevailing winds, currents, shoals and
landmarks. The VOC also produced its own
charts.
In the
context of the Dutch-Portuguese
War the company established its headquarters in Batavia,
Java
(now
Jakarta
, Indonesia
). Other colonial outposts were also
established in the East Indies, such as
on the Spice
Islands
(Moluccas
), which include the Banda Islands
, where the VOC forcibly maintained a monopoly over
nutmeg and mace. Methods used to maintain the
monopoly included the violent suppression of the native population,
not stopping short of
extortion and
mass murder. In addition, VOC
representatives sometimes used the tactic of burning spice trees in
order to force indigenous populations to grow other crops, thus
artificially cutting the supply of spices like nutmeg and
cloves.
VOC outposts
Organization and leadership structures were varied as necessary in
the various VOC outposts:
- ::See more at VOC
Kapitans in India
- ::See more at VOC Factors in
China
Opperhoofd is a Dutch word (plural
Opperhoofden) which
literally means 'supreme head[man]'. In this VOC context, the word
is a
gubernatorial title, comparable
to the English
Chief factor, for the
chief executive officer of a Dutch
factory in the sense of trading
post, as lead by a Factor, i.e. agent.
- ::See
more at VOC Opperhoofden in
Japan

Council of Justice in Batavia
The Council of Justice in Batavia was the appelate court for all
the other VOC Company posts in the VOC empire.
Notable VOC ships
- :Replicas have been constructed
of several VOC ships, marked with an (R)
See also

Dutch and other European settlements
in India.
Other trade companies of the age of the sail
Governors General of the Dutch East India Company
Famous people of the VOC
References
- Mondo Visione web site: Chambers, Clem. "Who needs stock exchanges?"
Exchanges Handbook. -- retrieved 1 February 2008.
- De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 383
- In the medium term, as new suppliers could enter the market. In
the short term the supply was, of course, also inelastic.
- De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 384-385
- De Vries and Vander Woude, p. 386
- De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 386
- VOC Warfare - political interaction
- The share price had appreciated significantly, so in that
respect the dividend was less impressive
- De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 434-435
- De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 430-433
- During the Nine Year's War, the French and
Dutch companies came to blows on the Indian Subcontinent. The
French sent naval expeditions from metropolitan France, which the
VOC easily countered. On the other hand, the VOC conquered the
important fortress of Pondichérie after a siege of only sixteen days by
an expedition of 3000 men and 19 ships under Laurens Pit from
Negapatnam in
September 1693. The Dutch then made the defenses of the fortress
impregnable, which they came to regret when the Dutch government
returned it to the French by the Treaty of Ryswick in exchange for
tariff concessions in Europe by the French. Chauhuri and Israel, p
424
- De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 433-434
- Chaudhuri and Israel, pp. 428-429
- However, the VOC had been defeated many times before. On the
Indian Subcontinent, the EIC had suffered a resounding defeat from
the Mughal forces in its 1689 Mughal War; Chaudhury and Israel, pp.
435-436
- It was also helpful that the price war with the EIC in the
early decade had caused the accumulation of enormous inventories of
pepper and spices, which enabled the VOC to cut down on shipments
later on, thereby freeing up capital to increase shipments of other
goods;De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 436
- De Vries and Van der Woude, pp.436-437
- De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 437-440
- De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 441-442
- De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 447
- De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 448
- De Vries and Van der Woude, pp.449-455
- A particularly egregious example was that of the "Amfioen
Society". This was a business of higher VOC-employees that received
a monopoly of the opium trade on Java, at a time when the VOC had
to pay monopoly prices to the EIC to buy the opium in Bengal;
Burger, passim
- De Vries and Van der Woude, pp.454-455
- TANAP, The end of the VOC
- ibid.
- De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 385
- De Vries and Van der Woude, pp.384-385
Further reading
- Ames, Glenn J. The Globe Encompassed: The Age of European
Discovery, 1500-1700. Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008.
- Blussé, L. et al., eds. The Deshima [sic]
Dagregisters: Their Original Tables of Content. Leiden,
1995-2001.
- Blussé, L. et al., eds. The Deshima Diaries
Marginalia 1740-1800. Tokyo, 2004.
- Boxer, C.R. Jan Compagnie in Japan, 1600-1850: An Essay on
the Cultural Aristic and Scientific Influence Exercised by the
Hollanders in Japan from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth
Centuries. Den Haag, 1950.
- Boxer, C.R. The Dutch Seaborne Empire: 1600-1800.
London, 1965.
- (2003), "The Forgotten Gold? The Importance of the Dutch opium
trade in the Seventeenth Century", in Eidos.
University College Utrecht Academic Magazine. Issue 2/2003
Utrecht University
- (1991), "The English and Dutch East India Companies and the
Glorious Revolution of 1688-9", in: , The Anglo-Dutch
moment. Essays on the Glorious Revolution and its world
impact, Cambridge U.P, ISBN 0-521-39075-3,
pp. 407–438
- (1997), The First Modern Economy. Success,
Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815,
Cambridge University
Press, ISBN 978-0-521-57825-7
- Furber, Holden, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient
1600-1800. Minneapolis, 1976
- Israel, Jonathan I., Dutch Primacy in World Trade
1585-1740. Oxford, 1989
- Glamann, Kristof., Dutch-Asiatic Trade 1620-1740.
The Hague
, 1958
External links